The smile of the heretics For self-dramatization of the early Reformation

The day Luther burned the papal bull, the Wittenberg students staged a strange procession through town, a procession which has often been interpreted in terms of medieval folk culture and carnival. This paper, however, argues that the Reformation movement's first public display drew primarily on learned pamphlets and text of the "causa Lutheri." As Luther fashioned himself as a heretic by approving of the Antichrist's false bull, the students, by granting Luther's enemies a mock "triumphus," declared themselves to be heretics. © Mohr Siebeck.